Ulysses S. Grant’s aide, Seneca Tonawanda Native American Ely Parker, was profiled on the Defense Department’s website as an historical portrait. The Washington Post revealed that this page was taken down, as was the page devoted Ira Hayes, a Native American who helped raise the flag on Iwo Jima during World War II. Code Talkers’ pages were also removed. Hundreds of other pages dealing with Black, Native American, immigrant, and women service members have been taken down. People trying to access them get a “404 File Not Found” message with the notation “DEI” in the URL.
Pentagon spokesperson John Ullyot put out a statement on Monday that responded to the disappearances: “As Secretary [of Defense] Hegseth has said, DEI is dead at the Defense Department. Efforts to divide the force — to put one group ahead of another through DEI programs — erode camaraderie and threaten mission execution.”
Ely Parker was boor in New York near Niagara Falls on the Tonawanda Reservation in 1828. His father was a Senaca Chief who had fought for the United States during the War of 1812. Ely Parker studied law but he was prevented from taking the bar exam because he was an Indian. He then studied engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He practiced civil engineering upon graduation and became a sachem of the Senecas.
When the Civil War broke out, Parker tried to enlist in the army, but he was prevented because he was an Indian. He used his personal contact with Ulysses S. Grant to become a captain in his army and he was an engineer in the siege of Vicksburg. During the Chattanooga Campaign he became Grant’s adjutant. During the siege of Peterburg, he became military secretary to grant and helped draw up Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Courthouse in 1865.
At the surrender meeting, as immigrant officers were attending Grant, Lee saw Parker. According to Parker, “He extended his hand and said, ‘I am glad to see one real American here.’ I shook his hand and said, ‘We are all Americans.'” After the war he continued to serve General Grant, leaving the army when Grant took office as president in 1869 with the rank brevet brigadier general of the regular army. He became the Commissioner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs under Grant.
He is buried in Forest Lawn Cemetery in Buffalo, not far from where he grew up.
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Others have been restored. Has Ely Parker been restored? If not why not?
My father was from the Tonawanda reservation.